This is horrible, very bad, terrible for you, junk food, but it's SO good! You wouldn't want a steady diet of this (for the above reasons), but it's a delicious treat, once in a while. Of course, I might be biased - I just LOVE circus peanuts!

Junie, Where in the world did you come up with that idea, recipe or whatever you could call it? Sounds kinda gross, but I'm willing to try it on one of my kids that will eat anything. And I do mean anything!

Pigzzilla

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I can learn something new-to-me every day. I didn't have any idea what "Circus Peanuts" were until I googled it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_Peanuts Laughed out loud, when I realized I've been eating them (used to eat them) since I was a small kid.

Sounds like an interesting recipe. May give it a try, as soon as I can round up some peanuts that aren't roasted.

Thanks for sharing!
Lee

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Pigzzilla, since I love circus peanuts so much, I thought there might be a way to make them at home, so I googled circus peanut recipes. I didn't find a recipe for making them, but Spangler Candy Company had this recipe, so I tried it. It was the only recipe I could find that used them.

BTW, I dehydrate circus peanuts, too. I slice them, then dry until crisp. The kids love them and they seem to keep forever (as long as the kids don't find them)

Circus peanuts are one of the few candies that the dollar store carries that are made in America.

I also make a circus peanut cake, but it doesn't have any circus peanuts in it, just food color and banana flavoring.

Thanks for the link Lee, I have had them before too but we always called them Marshmallow peanuts. I think my kids might like this. When I first read the recipe I thought ewwww why in the world would anyone put nuts in jello???? LOL

You actually melt the circus peanuts in this recipe, but, while I was making it, I thought it would be good to stir in some marshmallows, too. Or, maybe, not melt the circus peanuts all the way. I thought about leaving out the fruit, too. I've got a raging sweet tooth this week.

I haven't made these in a long time, because they require a lot of room and make a big mess, but they are just about like the circus peanuts candy.

Utensils needed:

Stand mixer (you must use a stand mixer for this, a hand mixer is not strong enough)
whip attachment (you can use regular beaters but the whip works well)
Small saucepan with lid
candy thermometer
small bowl
4 jelly roll cake pans (you can also use cookie sheets, but it makes less of a mess on a pan with sides)
piping bag with 1/2 inch tip
parchment paper
scissors or pizza cutter

Put the ice water in the bowl of the stand mixer and add the gelatin.
In a small saucepan combine the room temperature water, sugar, corn syrup, and salt. Put the saucepan over medium heat, cover and allow to cook for 3-4 minutes (sugar should melt and the steam should wash all the sugar crystals from the sides of the pan). Remove the cover and clip the candy thermometer to the side of the pan (The bulb of the thermometer should be in the syrup mixture, but not touch the bottom of the pan). Continue to cook until the syrup mixture reaches 240^F (takes about 7-8 minutes). Remove it from the heat right away when it reaches 240^F.
Turn the mixer on low speed and slowly pour the hot syrup mixture down the side of the bowl (so the syrup wont splash) into the gelatin mixture. Once you have added all the syrup, turn the mixer up to high and mix until the fluff is thick and lukewarm about 12-14 minutes. add the banana flavor and food coloring and continue to mix one minute more.

In a small bowl mix the powdered sugar and the corn starch.
Line the jelly roll cake pans with parchment paper and spray with non-stick cooking spray and dust with a little of the powdered sugar mixture.

Put the 1/2 inch tip on your piping bag, and spray the inside of the bag and tip with nonstick cooking spray. Fill the bag with your fluff mixture, and pipe ropes of fluff lengthways on the prepared pans with a fat, skinny, fat skinny design (to look like peanuts). Using scissors or a pizza cutter, sprayed with non-stick spray, cut at every other "skinny" place to resemble peanuts. Cover your fluff with the rest of the powdered sugar mixture and allow them to sit for 4 hours or overnight. Shake off the excess powdered sugar and your "circus peanuts" are ready. For a crispier texture you can dehydrate these in your food dehydrator (use a low heat). Store them in a tin at room temperature.

You can play around with the flavor and color of these. But the orange color and banana flavor is the most traditional. Also someone at General mills found that the scraps of these left over from the manufacturing process tasted good mixed with his morning cereal. They used different colors and flavors and "Lucky Charms" were born.

If you have a dehydrator, try drying miniature marshmallows. They get crispy, like the ones in cereal. The circus peanuts get a bit too hard.

Dehydrated marshmallows have more uses than you'd expect. I throw them in jello salad, ambrosia, and on top of candied sweet potatoes - no need to rehydrate them, they do it on their own. Of course, that's only if I can stay out of them. I love them straight from the jar.